Help Needed With Online Video Content

I am fairly new to Mac's and have a MBP 2.2 with Tiger installed. I have Safari & Firefox installed for web browsers. My software is all up to date. I am finding that most times (but not all) I have great difficulty in viewing any online video's from websites - it either takes an absolute age to load, loads a bit at a time, repetitively freezes & starts, breaks up or won't load at all. I would say it happens about 80% of the time. I have tried to do what little I can with my very novice knowledge of computers and the Mac system but this is just as bad as it was when I was on a PC.

I have checked adobe flash player and am up to date and only have either Safari or Firefox on at any one time with no other programmes running. My activity monitor usually shows that the CPU is idle between 85% and 95%.

I found a programme called Speedbit but it only works for PC's (I would have to find that after I had made the switch to Mac's!) but I cannot find anything similar for Mac's.

Can anyone please help me out as I am at a loss. Why is this happening and what is the solution? Please feel free to give me guidance and instructions as if I were a complete idiot! This is really doing my head in!

These are the downloads and the settings you need in order to view/hear pretty much everything that the net can throw at you: The setup described below has proved repeatedly successful on both PPC and Intel macs, but nothing in life carries a guarantee!

It is known to work in the great majority of cases with Safari 3.0.4, QT 7.3 and OS 10.4.11. (If you are running Leopard, ensure that all plug-ins have been updated for OS 10.5)

Assuming you already run Tiger versions OS 10.4.9 or above (this has not yet been verified with Leopard) and have Quicktime 7.2 or above, and are using Safari 2 or 3, download and install (or re-install even if you already had them) the latest versions, suitable for your flavor of Mac, of:

In earlier versions than QT 7.1.3 in Quicktime Preferences, under advanced, UNcheck Enable Flash, and under Mime settings/Miscellananeous only check Quicktime HTML (QHTM).

You should also ensure, if you are running Tiger 10.4.11 or Leopard, that you have downloaded and installed the correct version for your Mac of Security Update 2007-009.1.1, which also deals with the Quicktime/Flash issues you may have experienced, such as the '?'. What happened was that both Quicktime as well as Adobe FlashPlayer tried to play the Flash video at the same time. This no longer happens. (N.B. Security Update 2007-009 requires both a restart and a permission repair.)

In Macintosh HD/Library/Quicktime/ delete any files relating to DivX (Perian already has them). However it should be noted that Perian is not an internet plugin and will not play DivX files imbedded on a website. For that you will need the DivX Player browser plugin available from http://www.divx.com/divx/mac/

Now go to Safari Preferences/Security, and tick the boxes under Web Content (all 4 of them).

Lastly open Audio Midi Setup (which you will find in the Utilities Folder of your Applications Folder) and click on Audio Devices. Make sure that both Audio Input and Audio Output, under Format, are set to 44100 Hz.

Important: Now repair permissions and restart.

You should also consider having the free VLC Player from http://www.videolan.org/ in your armory, as this plays almost anything that DVD Player might not.

Thank you very much for your detailed help & reply! I will do as you have suggested (I hope I do it correctly!) and will let you know how things are going - it may take me some time as I am a little slow in the tech department so please bear with me! Wish me luck!

PLEASE NOTE: After I had done what I could the following has happened:

*1) My Screen has got a a little blurry and is not as sharp as it was before.**2) Whenever I move the pointer across any part of the display or a page, it breaks up a little and does the same on text, lines or images. Text is sometimes broken or slanted when typing.**3) Intermittent rapid rise in temperature.*

My Tiger os 10.4.11. I did exactly as the above described but I was unable to follow the quicktime instructions as my quicktime preferences did not have those options. I have QT Version 7.3.1 and it has 2 sections for Preferences:

1) Preferences2) Quicktime Preferences

In just Preferences, there are two sections: General & Full Screen. In General there are options for:

Movies with boxes for

"Open Movies in New Players""Automatically Play Movies When Opened""Use High Quality Video Setting When Available""Show Closed Captioning When Available"

Timecode with boxes for:

"Show Timecode When Available""Show Absolute Frame Numbers"

Sound with boxes for:

"Play Sound in Frontmost Player Only""Play Sound When Application is in Background""Show Equaliser"

I have just noticed that the rapid rise in temperature of my MBP is being caused by Quicktime. I do not even have any thing playing in QT, all I have done is just open it. In the Activity Monitor, QT shows the CPU% going as high as 89% but after a while it settles around 65% as long as I close the QT main window. If I leave the window visible, it shoots up gradually and my temperature rises rapidly. I had uninstalled QT, reinstalled it, checked for updates and did a repair permissions as advised. I am afraid that if I play anything now in QT, the heat rise would be just too much. It goes from around 40ºC to 70ºC within just a few minutes at which point I shut QT off otherwise it would just keep rising. Once again, any help with this and my previous post would be very appreciated!

I have a broadband internet and an using it wirelessly - not very highspeed - 1 gb think (probably slower). I never had this problem with quicktime before - it was the only one that really played OK. Since the reinstall, I have not even played anything on it - just opened the application. Like I said, after uninstalling and reinstalling, did this happen. I have read a couple of other posts that had this problem - one guy had his temps go up to 98ºC - I wasn't brave enough to go that far. It really is quite alarming how quickly the temperature rises - about a degree every few seconds. What the **** has happened? Can I email apple? Why would an uninstall/reinstall of QT do this - QT is Apple software so it should work seamlessly. I am so new to Mac's, I just am lost. Are my settings OK? Please kindly advise!!

This is going beyond "Getting online and networking".But only one of those threads is useful. the apple.com discussion.Something's causing your mac to overheat.

If you have made sure that all the vents are clear (place mac on a solid surface - no rugs, tablecloths, blankets), and yu've checked that the intake and exhaust vents are clear of crud and/or dust. try blasting with compressed air. And you still haven't said whether this is a New mac...and you hav;ent said if there's an Apple store near you.

Please check the items above, in the sentence starting with "If..."This is sort of starting to look like a hardware issue. Contact Apple?

So very sorry to have omitted the info you asked for - my apologies. It is not a new MBP but is just about 6.5 months old so is still under warranty. There is a Apple Store about an hour away if the traffic is good otherwise in the London traffic, God knows how long it will take!

If I may ask, why would it all of a sudden be a H/W problem when everything was fine before the uninstalls/reinstalls? Why doe it only happen with QT and nothing else? It seems something in between the uninstalls and reinstalls has caused an issue does it not? I may be very wrong but that seems to make sense to a non techie like me!

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